How to Utilize a Steppe Lancer – Explained Like I’m Five (ELI5)
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While exploring the changes in Definitive Edition and reviewing my friends the Mongols, I came across a new unit called the Steppe Lancer.
However, I noticed that the cost in gold seems too high, and I don’t see myself using them in place of Mangudai.
Could there be a situation where Steppe Lancers have an advantage over similar units like Cavalry Archers?
Or do they work better in other civilizations?
I’m unsure if I’m being too hesitant about using them.
There’s lots of good things they do.
I’ll highlight one thing I like the most.
When you have a steppes vs melee you always get the first hour.
Two armies clash, steppes hit first.
Then the enemy closes the distance and gets hit by the second line steppes.
Sometimes due to unit clustering you’ll kill stuff before it even his you once.
If you have other cavalry with your steppes then after the first steppe attack your cavalry will run past them and take the first wave of enemy attacks.
This may confuse your enemy melee who may try to go around your melee to carry out the first auto attacks vs your steppes instead of switching.
This melee confusion barely happens to the steppes themselves because they can reach so much more with their range.
You exploit the 1 range with micro and/or double melee compositions.
They’re niche and you have to experiment with them because right now the community opinion is basically “We don’t know.
We thought they sucked but then it turns out they don’t, so it’s clear we don’t understand them well”.
they are great in groups of 4-8 on early castle age.
You can out-micro pikes by kiting them and attacking the leading unit (maybe take one hit but the pikes die), you can one-shot villagers reliably because they don’t trip over each other thanks to the one range, and you can tear through palisades faster than KTs can (again thanks to the extra range).
They are a great offensive unit for a team like mongols if you hit castle age before opponent.
You don’t commit hard to them easier, just transition into KT (if against archer) or camels (if against KT).
They’re a unit that hits like a knight, dealing melee damage, but they cost a lot less gold.
Because of AoE’s subtractive armor, the damage they do isn’t just “a couple points higher”, but can often be 2-2.5x higher than light cav.
Because of the remarkably low damage values on light cav, there really are a lot of situations where they don’t “cut the mustard”, and just don’t have enough damage output.
The “gotcha” with Steppe Lancers is that they’re fragile, and they **beg** to be used as a combined arms force.
If you build Light Cav + Steppe Lancers, you’ll have much more economical results than if you just spam Steppe Lancers.
They have the +1 range for a big reason — it’s NOT to get a quick, cheeky early hit in (this can matter a little bit with pikes, but it’s really dicey).
The real reason is to let your cavalry-blob self-sort; your light cav will always find their way to the front, where they take the hits, and the SL will usually take a much lower portion of the blows being dealt in a fight.
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Why does this matter?
Because the factions they’re found in, every one of them, *already has their gold budgeted for Cavalry Archers.* Gold and food follow a really weird ramp-up in value; for part of the game, they’re fungible, and they’re of similar worth, but once you get into the castle age, and your eco ramps up, food rapidly becomes much less valuable than gold (it’s incredibly debatable when this “thermocline” threshold lays, so I’m not going to waste time arguing with people about it, but it’s inarguable as a “limit case” that once you get into the late imperial age, you’re starved for gold, and rolling in endless amounts of food).
You can field Knights as a Mongol player, but it really hurts because **every knight you build now is basically one Mangudai you don’t get to build later**.
It’s a timing gamble, and it’s dangerous; you’re sacrificing your mid-to-late game, for some pressure in the midgame.
SL allow you to add a little bit of knight-like punch to your Light cav, but at a “2 for 1 discount”.
IMO their biggest advantage over knights is that they produce quicker.
In that way they are a great power spike to exploit right as you hit castle.
They are great for mongols to bridge the gap to massing mangudai.
Mongols have an awkward early castle age, being very generic they can quickly lose their early momentum.
Mining stone idly to try and get to mangudai means sacrificing map control to get to an expensive unit that needs upgrades and mass to be effective.
You basically need to stall, knights are an ok option, but steppe lancers are great in the early castle age, as you can abuse their range to get through palisade walls very quickly.
If you are facing heavy archers you can mix them with knights, so they can actually hit archers where knights wouldn’t.
They aren’t viable later on though, as elite steppe lancer is expensive and quite weak compared to cavalier, and too expensive compared to hussar.
Mongols get one of the better bonuses, additional
health putting castle age steppe lancers close to knights in health, the balance part being that in imp you are missing the last armor upgrade, which doesn’t matter since you want to get to hussar/mangudai.
Unless you are up against a Knight spammer, just spam these guys non stop.
They a excellent at breaking walls, raiding, killing archers and eagles, with a good micro even kill pikes taking no damage
Steppe lancers are kinda like the in between of knights and light cav.
The best way to see them is as more cost effective knights because of comparable raiding ability and lower cost.
They also have 1 extra range which makes them great in tight fights (similarly to kamayuks) and the elite upgrade is almost always a waste of resources.
They’re affected by cavalry upgrades BTW and are more of a melee buffer/raiding unit than another CA, also these can be better than CA when you don’t have thumb ring but still want to raid or when you scout rushed but can’t afford an archery range.
They generally are very good at raiding.
Like an in between of knights and light cav
Make 5 and run through your opponent’s base
They work great with the Morley Rush.
They fill an important niche for Mongols.
Mongols have strong early game and strong late game, but awkward midgame.
Your eco bonus has fallen off but you need time to transition to Mangudai.
This is where the SL comes in.
You have a Knight like unit in the Castle Age but only spending about half the amount of gold as Knights.
So you can build this unit that gives you many of the perks of the Knight: map control, raid potential, strong vs Archers, while spending much less gold so you can more smoothly transition to your late game.
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